Nomiku Sous-Vide

I’ve been blogging on and off since 2007. I knew I didn’t have a lot readers back then, and that was fine. I stopped completely after leaving Hawaii in 2008. Somewhere in 2010 several people I know said around the same time that I should blog what I was cooking. So, bowing to peer pressure I started up again.

Over the years, I’ll admit some envy creeping in when blogs I read and blogger friends got shipped boxes of goods to evaluate and blog about. Who wouldn’t want to get a box of high end cheeses? Well, the saying goes good things come to those who wait. It certainly came true this time.

A few days ago Sean of Punk Domestics, Hedonia and About.com, added me to the Facebook Bay Area Food Bloggers page. (Sean’s blog Hedonia is actually what started me blogging in the first place.) Within minutes I was connected with Lisa Q. Fetterman the CEO of Nomiku. They make immersion circulators for Sous-Vide cooking. They were Kickstarter funded and are aimed at the home cook market. They sent me a refurbished unit. It arrived yesterday.

I’ve been cooking Sous-Vide since 2008. Back then the only choice to buy was a very expensive restaurant grade immersion circulator. They were thousands of dollars, even used. But someone somewhere on the internet showed me how to use a greenhouse temperature controller to turn on and off my crockpot to do sous-vide. You can read my blog post from back then here. It worked well enough, but was a lot of equipment on the counter: the crock pot, the controller and heavy wires. So, I was a bit remiss in using it much. I found that meats did the best, finally settling on always doing my tri-tip roasts in it. A more recent blog post about that is here.

So, the Nomiku unit arrived yesterday and I just so happened to have lamb chops selected for dinner. I tore open the box and put it right to work. The manual is very small, with good reason, it’s super easy to use. Clip it to a pot, fill with water to level of between the two indicated lines, plug it in, turn the dial to the desired temperature and that’s it. A press of the dial switches between Celsius and Fahrenheit. It heated the water quickly and I vacuum sealed the chops with my Foodsaver, putting some Basque Marinade in. If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, you can just use zip lock bags, sealing them pressing out as much air as possible.

The recipes that came with the Nomiku suggested two hours at 55°C for lamb chops and that’s what I did. It gurgles away like the sound of an aquarium while it’s running. Far from loud or annoying. If you’re playing music I doubt you’ll even notice it.

After the two hours I seared the chops in a pan on the stove. They were perfect. Medium rare from edge to edge and delicious. Here’s the result:

This morning I made a sous-vide egg for breakfast, one hour at 65°C. The yolk was like custard and amazing. The whites were still a little runny, which I’ve been told can be solved by dunking in boiling water for a few seconds. I will try that the next time. Theres also an iPhone/iPad app that I may try that takes another way to cook the perfect sous-vide egg.

You’ll notice I’ve been sticking with Celsius. Most of the recipes out there are for Celsius. The Nomiku is easy to switch back and forth though.

The bottom line is that this unit is easy to use and works very well. This version is $299. A new Wi-Fi version is coming and will be $199. Both can be ordered at nomiku.com.

I was given a refurbished Nomiku. There was no request for me to write a review. The opinions are mine alone and based on having the unit for a day, using it twice.